by Evie Manieri
For the first time she felt Rho’s true grief, and how desperately he wanted to keep it from her. She turned back around and saw him standing with one hand braced against the tomb, holding it back, as if he expected it to slide right over him and crush him. Already she could feel him seeping back into the Rho-shaped hollow he had left behind: an older, sadder version of Trey. The trapdoor keeping her secrets hidden away strained against its latch, but she layered it over with frivolity—banquets, blouses, pelts, perfume—until she felt ill, like she’d eaten too many sweets.
She clung to the grooved edge of the tomb as he straightened up and came around toward her. The change in him showed even more from close up; either he had aged more than he should have in the last three years, or he had been through something truly awful.
He worried the links of the necklace between his fingers for a while before answering her.
She couldn’t swallow past the sudden lump in her throat.
Words scrabbled around inside Kira’s head like mice in a sack, climbing over each other and gnawing at the seams to find their way out. Telling Rho about Trey was not an option; something not even to be considered.
Aline slipped out of the darkness as Kira came past and they retraced their steps through the crypt and out into the dark gray of the Norlander evening. Kira walked along in a daze, trying to blank that distressing conversation out of her mind, at least for the time being, until she had time to think through what it all meant. The task of not thinking required so much effort that she saw nothing except Aline’s back until they walked around to the front of Arregador House and came up against a group of people blocking their way.
she told Aline, even more adamant when she recognized the lofty personage of Exemplar Orina and the smug members of her retinue, newly returned from the forests, judging by their bloodied hunting clothes.
The door-warden opened up at her knock, and she avoided speaking to anyone else as she and Aline swept through the halls into their poky little corridor. Aline opened the door for her.
said Kira, even as her body felt like it was pulling her toward the bed. on top of me, and I’m going to have a hard time staying close to the emperor if Rho keeps making a nuisance of himself. Everything’s gone wrong at once. I wish we could go back to the way everything was before he got here.>
A knock came at the door. Aline hesitated, but she left and came back a moment later with a note. Kira took it from her and tossed it down on the table without opening it. She didn’t need to read it. Gannon’s interview with Eofar must have ended satisfactorily, so now he was whistling for her as if she was one of his smelly hounds. And like them, she would obey. She had allowed the collar to be placed around her neck of her own free will; whingeing about it now would not loosen it.
She handed the pins back to Aline and straightened up to have her hair re-dressed.
Chapter 15
Isa stared blankly down at the lines and shapes on the Nomas’ map, then rotated it until the waves of blue—the most obvious landmark—lined up with the sea sparkling to her left. She had always imagined that when she left the Shadar it would be over the sea, sailing toward the gray Norlander horizon. She had never once imagined going the other way, into the desert. The desert meant death for people like her.
Bitter anger kept her going at first, and she embraced its dark vigor. She hated Falkar. She hated Binit. She hated Daryan for letting her leave, but she hated herself more for going.
The landmarks on her map were few and far between and the glare made her eyes water, but if she missed one rock formation, trench or crude shelter, she’d be flying into a barren death-trap. Soon everything hurt. She felt like a piece of fruit bruised past wanting and then tossed aside. At the first oasis, which was little more than a circle of stones around a deep well, Aeda flopped down in the hot sand and whimpered so pathetically that Isa nearly gave in and turned around. Then she thought of the humiliation of crawling back now and got the triffon back in the air.
She flew on and on, fighting sleep as the sun sank slowly toward the horizon. She might have even nodded off at one point, because the second oasis never appeared. She tried to ignore the panic raking its claws through her chest as she checked the landmarks on the map, but the landscape would not arrange itself to match. She was on the verge of retracing her flight path when the smudge of color she had been watching in the distance eventually resolved itself into a stack of huge red boulders sheltering a tiny oasis. She had missed the second one, but miraculously, she had found the third. They landed by the bank of the spring-fed pool and after Isa fumbled her way out of the straps and buckles, she stumbled to the water and finally collapsed, lying there soaked to the skin until the sand turned gray and the air chilled around her.
Aeda had made herself a meal of something feathery by the time she dragged herself out of the water. She found the stores the Nomas had buried underneath a marked rock, but she couldn’t make herself eat. She put a box of journey-biscuit and some dried meat into her saddlebag, and returned the rest.
She had already taken her last two pills, though she didn’t even remember swallowing them.
Her wet clothes stuck to her skin as she looked up at the stars. She had spent many dull hours in her cot in the ashadom staring up at the dots on the ceiling, but no meaning had ever emerged. Even the Shadari no longer remembered the names of their gods, so how could she have hoped to make any sense of their markings? She listened to the silence of the vast desert around her and imagined how little trace she would leave if she were to die here: just bones in the sand.
She slept heavily and without dreaming, but the world she woke into felt less real than most dreams. The air had no scent. The light had no color. The textures of the water, the sand, the rocks, and the tall grasses were indistinguishable from each other. She had left her senses back in the Shadar, along with everything else she had ever cared about.
Two more days passed the same way, flying from oasis to oasis under the constant fear of losing her way. A thin scab had formed over her heart by the third day so that she was no longer in danger of bleeding out with every breath.
At sunset on the fourth day she caught up with the caravan. From the air, she could see nothing of the town except a fuzzy haze and a few shining spots that turned out to be little ponds reflecting the setting sun; as she got closer, the haze resolved into the town of Marshmere: a collection of crude wooden buildings clustered together at the mouth of a slow-running river. The Nomas had set up camp a little way from there, on the edge of reed-infested marshland. She brought Aeda down at the edge of one of the ponds, crushing the tall grasses and startling a flock of spotted brown birds into flight, but she just sat in the saddle, lacking the volition even to pull herself out of the harness.
She braced herself for a mob of Nomas men bristling with difficult questions, but the few who came out to meet her said little, and took charge of Aeda without being asked. Maybe they felt the invisible barrier wrapped around her, separating her from everything except the pain in her arm. She fumbled under her cloak before remembering her pouch was empty.
A large man with shaggy blond hair came forward as she swung down from the saddle. Four days of constant riding had stiffened her so much that the sand pulled at her feet like cement.
“You probably don’t remember me, Lady Isa. My name’s Behr,” he said, speaking Shadari; many Nomas did not speak Norlander, and the rest only did so when they had no choice. He bent back the reeds so she could come out onto the path. “I’m the wagon-master.”
“Is Lahlil here?” Isa asked.
“I think she’s in her tent,” said Behr. “I’ll take you to her.”
A few of the men nodded to her as the wagon-master led her through the tents, but no one asked any questions. The camp had a hush to it that matched her mood so perfectly that she began to wonder if she had brought it with her. Men walked together with their arms over each other’s shoulders, or stood in small groups besides the stands of stiff reeds, but hardly anyone was speaking, and not a single child ran through the streets between the tents.
“In there,” said Behr, pointing her to one of the striped tents, and left.
Isa didn’t want to go in. She didn’t want to tell Lahlil or anyone else what had happened, because telling would make it more real, and right now she wanted to believe she had dreamed it all and could still wake up.
She heard someone huffing loudly behind her and stepped aside. The Nomas woman’s eyes were swimming with tears and her face was so blotchy from crying that at first Isa didn’t even recognize her. But Mairi didn’t notice her either; she walked right past her and pulled the tent flap aside with enough force to shake the whole structure on its supports. She left it open just wide enough for Isa to see inside.
“What are you doing here?” Mairi demanded, directing her words to the shadowy figure inside the tent. Lahlil had her back to the entrance and was methodically placing the items laid out on the bed into a large traveling pack. It looked like the possessions she had excluded from consideration had been flung all around the room, and some of them had been smashed or torn up, maybe deliberately. A cradle sat in the corner next to a rocking chair, but both were empty. Lahlil looked better than Isa had ever seen her—the loose sleeves of the Nomas blouse hid the mess on her arm, and the new eye-patch was a definite improvement over the old black one—but the invisible bandages wrapped around her emotions had come loose and released something jagged, like a snapped bone poking out from a broken leg.
Mairi said something in Nomas; Isa spoke little of the language, but thought it was something like, “Now you’re leaving?”
“Not yet,” said Lahlil.
“You should be with him. He wants you.”
“What are you doing here?” Lahlil returned with just as much force. The sound of her voice scraped at Isa’s throbbing nerves like sandpaper. “You should be with him, trying
to cure him.”
“Cure?” Mairi’s mouth hung open. “Sweet Amai, I thought you understood. I can’t cure this. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Isa wasn’t understanding much; she had no idea what they were talking about.
“There has to be something you can do,” said Lahlil. She ran a knuckle along the scar at the corner of her mouth. “All those things you have, all those medicines. They must be good for something.”
“I know how to splint legs, deliver babies, take fishing hooks out of arms. If there were any Norlander healers still in the Shadar, I’d say take him there. They could at least see what it’s doing to him. But the truth is, I don’t even know where to start.”
“It’s killing him,” said Lahlil. “Start there.”
“You’re not listening—”
“You’re just not trying hard enough. You—”
Mairi slapped Lahlil’s face as hard as she could, but Lahlil didn’t move, not even to raise her hand to the burning spot on her cheek where the healer’s fingers had marked her. Isa could feel the ache of it pulsing through her.
“Don’t you dare—dare—say that to me,” Mairi said with her teeth clenched tight. “I grew up with Jachi. He’s as near a brother to me as anyone, and he’s my king, and you—” Her mouth twisted up and she swallowed hard, apparently unable to continue. Then she left, holding her breath as if she couldn’t bear the stench, again walking right past Isa without noticing her at all.
Isa went into the tent.
Lahlil’s emotions burst out in a single flash of white flame and immolated the tent and everything in it, including the two of them, to an ash so fine that it hung in the air like a cloud. Isa wet her lips as if she could feel the ash settling on her face.